Madrid is going to have a Cybersecurity Agency, which will be created based on a law whose text was approved this Wednesday by the governing council and will now be sent to the Assembly for debate and approval. This is a measure, as explained by the Minister of Digitization and Local Administration, Carlos Izquierdo, intended to combat the increase in hacker activity, which has doubled since the pandemic.

Specifically, according to national data provided by Izquierdo, it has gone from 40,000 cyberattacks per year in 2019, to more than 100,000 today. A figure that also has to do, he warns, with a greater digitalization of the activity, caused precisely by the pandemic.

The Agency will be in charge of coordinating all the critical organizations of the Community of Madrid: from Metro to Canal de Isabel II, Emergencies 112 or the Regional Transport Consortium. It will also design the Cybersecurity plan for the entire region, and will be in charge of disseminating the culture of cybersecurity to all users, not just regional officials.

The Madrid Cybersecurity Law has been prepared in collaboration with the Ministry of the Presidency, and with national organizations such as the National Center for the Protection of Critical Infrastructures, the National Cryptographic Center or the CNI.